The Associated PressMmm, tastes like chicken...Cinderella stories sometimes make it onto the marquee in men’s Grand Slam tennis. Gaston Gaudio at the 2004 French Open and Thomas Johansson at the 2002 Australian Open are the two most recent examples.

But the women? Fugettaboutit. The chasm between the top handful of players and the rest of the field always has been so great that an honest-to-goodness upset champion simply never happens. Quick, name the last woman to win a Grand Slam title who had never reached the Top 10 prior to her major moment.

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Time's up. It was Barbara Jordan, who triumphed at the Australian Open way back in 1979 -- when the Aussie tournament was a major in name only. (She beat someone named Sharon Walsh in the final.)

But believe it or not, this March of the Mighty may finally end in a couple of weeks. The conditions, at long last, are right for a Cinderella to rise up and crash the ball.

Think about it: Serena Williams will come into Roland Garros having played only two tournaments in four months. An injured Kim Clijsters will be on the sidelines. Justine Henin’s brilliant comeback has seen a fair amount of ugly tennis mixed in (Gisela Dulko is among her conquerors). Defending champion Svetlana Kuznetsova can’t find the court these days. And the list goes on.

Meanwhile, the hottest hands on the tour belong to veterans Samantha Stosur, a 26-year-old Aussie at a career high of 8th in the world, and Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez, a 27-year-old who entered the Foro Italico last week at a career high of 26th in the world.

Even more so than Stosur, Martinez Sanchez represents the pure-breed underdog. There is nothing quite so thrilling and uplifting in sport as seeing a true underdog pull off an upset. Joe Namath wagging his finger at the end of Super Bowl III, Jim Valvano’s Edvard Munch-like scream as his North Carolina State team created March Madness, the U.S. Olympic ice hockey team crowding onto the medal stand ... these are images that linger and even grow in memory long after the fact. Martinez Sanchez’s win at the Italian Open on Saturday fits squarely into this category, if on a smaller scale. No, Rome isn’t a Grand Slam tournament, but it’s as close as it comes without being the real thing. Look at the list of women’s champions at the Foro Italico over the past two decades -- Grand Slam champions and World Number Ones as far as the eye can see. Until Martinez Sanchez, that is, whose victory in Rome last week will bump her into the Top 20 for the first time in her long career.

Could she shock the world in Paris? That’s highly unlikely. But that’s also the point. And there’s no doubt about the heroic possibilities -- she’s a serve-and-volley claycourt specialist, for crying out loud! With her unusual style of play and her hard-won maturity, she proved this past week she has the ability to befuddle players with more talent and bigger shots. Mixing up sneaky serve-and-volley tennis with brilliant, out-of-the-clear-blue-sky drop shots, she made Ana Ivanovic flinch so often during their semifinal match that it became a tic. A day later, her weird, paddle-ball groundstrokes mesmerized Jelena Jankovic. By the beginning of the second set, you could see the fear and doubt in the Serb’s eyes: Is she going to hit a drop shot? A loopy lob/groundstroke? A snappy cross-court blast? Jankovic had no idea. No notable player since Francoise Durr has had such unconventional strokes.

Before taking the Italian Open, Martinez Sanchez had won just two WTA singles titles in her career -- Bogota and Bastad. These are minor events, but clearly something has clicked with her recently. Both titles came last year -- and she beat Caroline Wozniacki in the Bastad final. We like the trend.

Here’s to Martinez Sanchez racking up more upset victories in the days and weeks ahead.